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Burning Flags PressThe website of Glen E. Friedman. Renowned for both his work with musicians like Fugazi, Minor Threat, Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, Slayer (and many, many more) as well as his groundbreaking documentation of the burgeoning skateboard phenomenon in the late `70's, Glen has been privvy to (and has summarily captured on film) some of the coolest stuff ever. He's also an incredibly insightful and nice guy to boot.

SoHo Blues - Photography by Allan TannenbaumAllan Tannenbaum is a local photographer who has been everywhere and shot everything, from members of Blondie hanging out at the Mudd Club through the collapsing towers of the World Trade Center on September 11th. You could spend hours on this site, and I have.

Robert Otter PhotographsAmazing vintage photographs of New York City, specifically my own neighborhood, Greenwich Village.

Big Laughs

The Weblog of Spumco's John K.The weblog of cartoonist John Kricfalusi, crazed mind and frantic pencil behind the original "Ren & Stimpy," as well as "The Goddamn George Liquor Show." Surreal, unapologetic, uncompromising genius.

December 30, 2015

None The Worse for Wear: The Life & Times of R.B. Korbet

Some of you might remember an entry I posted here several weeks back that, in the advance of the release of Ada Calhoun’s “St. Marks is Dead,” ruminated on what I called the steady “defpunkification” of St. Marks Place. To illustrate same, I repurposed a photograph I’d seen floating around the internet for some time, that being the great shot below of a gaggle of teenage punks gathered on the stoop of 4 St. Marks (adjacent to the now-soon-to-depart Trash & Vaudeville). In a single image, the photograph in question completely captures a certain era of the street — to say nothing of the neighborhood — that has since largely vanished.

In short order, I fielded a note on Facebook from someone who’d seen the photo on my post and asked that it be properly credited to Dave 'Daze' Parsons of Rat Cage Records. I, of course, obliged, only to suddenly discover that the individual I was conversing with was none other than R.B. Korbet. That’s her above in the black, sitting in the center of the photograph and staring right at you.

While hers may not be an immediately resonant name to the layperson, acolytes of all things punk rock should doubtlessly recognize her as the lead singer of New York City proto-hardcore ensemble Even Worse.

Probably best known for their contribution to ROIR’s seminal compilation, New York Thrash (which I initially spoke about back here … kind of like the No New York for the early pre-hardcore scene in New York), Even Worse was a fixture in both the East Village and then-still-vibrant live music circuit of the early `80s. Alongside the similarly inclined likes of The Stimulators, the Undead, Bad Brains, Kraut, Heart Attack, False Prophets, Adrenalin O.D. and — yes, wait for it — the fledgling, pre-Hip-Hop Beastie Boys, Even Worse represented a thorny new crop of bands just as pissed off and just as viable as their more celebrated forebears in Television, the Ramones, the Dead Boys et al. from only a few years earlier. Even Worse also counted noted punk archivist, writer, "Big Takeover"-founder and all around ageless good guy, Jack Rabid in its ranks.

Did Even Worse make timeless music? Well, not really (which, of course, they’d be the first to admit). That said, they got up and fucking did it. As I once said about their pals in the Beastie Boys, while myself and my friends were largely happy to sit on the sidelines and, for lack of a better term, consume punk rock, young R.B. Korbet and her cohorts in Even Worse had the goddamn moxie to make their own. For that alone, they are heroes.

But while bands like the Beastie Boys and Bad Brains continued to ascend, the scene that had nurtured them and Even Worse started to mutate, morphing into an arguably less egalitarian and, well, more violent community. By the time what became "NYHC" was in full swing, Korbet had more or less divested from that crowd.

Following her split from Even Worse circa 1982, Korbet went on to play for a frankly dizzying array of NYC bands. From an early incarnation of King Missile (long before they became a “Beavis & Butthead” favorite with “Detachable Penis”) to a stint in the pugnaciously potty-mouthed Pussy Galore to even a chaos-fueled tenure in the notorious Missing Foundation, Korbet’s musical curriculum vitae alone is entirely more badass than you, me and everyone we know could ever hope to be.

In any case, since our initial exchange over that St. Marks photo, R.B. and I have become Facebook friends and frequent commenters on each other’s posts. With her afore-cited, illustrious past in mind, I thought it might be interesting to hear what she might have to say about everything that’s happened in the ensuing years since her days on the NYC punk scene (and beyond). I asked her if she’d be game for an interview for Flaming Pablum, and not only did she oblige, but she gave me a selection of richly detailed answers that are as funny and informative as they are thoughtful and self-effacing. R.B. is, was and e’re shall be the real deal, as you’ll soon see. Her answers are italicized.

Thirty-four years after the release of ROIR’s New York Thrash, it still seems like the narrative of that era of NYC punk is largely inhabited by boys. As the focal point of Even Worse and an early member of what became the hardcore community, how difficult was it to be a young woman in that scene?

I’m going to answer this in two parts. First, I'm glad you acknowledge that I was involved in what became the hardcore community, because most people know that by '83 I was rarely seen at a NYHC show save those of my closest friends. Admittedly I became a bit anti-social for a time.

There was a definite evolution; a lot of those bands started out in assorted punk guises and changed their sound as well as their outlook over time. I'm happy for all those that got the followings they did, they worked like motherfuckers for it, but it just got too much for me to deal with. Unless I am onstage or backstage, I've never been good in crowds, especially when there's a bloody cage fight going on on the dance floor. Ever since out-of-town bands began coming to 171 A around 1982 with the expressed intent of ‘kicking some New York pussy ass,’ the thrill kind of wore off for me. If you were there you know just what I’m talking about. Once I left Even Worse in 1982, I started exploring other genres on guitar as you know, but they were all rooted firmly in that DIY ethos.

I don't think my experience as a young girl on the scene is going to be like anyone else's. I never approached it like I was ‘a girl’, for a start, because I was never ‘girly’. So it wasn't difficult because I was a girl; it was difficult because I was fucking weird. No one could really figure me out or get inside my head. It's always been like that.

There were plenty of supremely cool chicks around circa `80-`82, and none of them were little puffballs either, just not many of them were in gigging bands at first. Of course there was Kate Schellenbach (Beastie Boys), and Cherl Boyze from Nasty Facts who played bass and sang, and was great, as well as Biss, the bassist in Savage Circle, who released a 7" in 1982 that was pure thrash. Also, the Crypt Crashers had Nancy on bass, and as you might know Rob went on to form CFA, and Kontra on to Virus. Those are the ones I recall that pre-dated hardcore, and I know someone will take me to task for not mentioning more names here.

Anyway, no one ever had the audacity to treat me like I was ‘just’ a girl, they knew they’d get their head handed to them. I was me and I was crazy and just wanted to play and have fun. Even when things got kind of hyper-macho after a while, I never got any gyp from anyone who was going strong on the hardcore scene. We were family; we came from the same place, so it wasn't a thing. You must remember, we had all gotten into punk because we were trying to escape that very sort of mainstream bullshit. A person was either righteous, or not, and that was the long and short of it.

Secondly, the gender thing. I would never even attempt to portray myself as any sort of spokesperson on so-called women’s issues. I've rarely been discriminated against for merely being female because I never played that game, or aspired towards the traditional gender role. I wore my heart and my mind on my sleeve, which gave people plenty of other things to judge me on. They could take it or leave it (and quite often the latter; I wasn’t very endearing a lot of the time). I've never gotten on stage in my underwear and pretended that equated an emancipated woman somehow. I always saw that as perpetuating a manufactured stereotype, and still do; you're buying into it, hook line and sinker. I’ve never been traditionally 'pretty' or ‘feminine’, I've never tried being ‘cute’ or ‘sexy’, or even attempted to act appropriately, whatever that is, so I’ve thankfully not been judged on any of it by society’s standards. I’m not being malicious, but just like I've never dressed up as a biker or a vampire or a pirate or whatever, it’s not for me.

This might make some people angry but I have to be honest. I wanted to play with the boys. From where I sat, men never had to apologize for anything, or act dopey or take the piss out of themselves, and I didn’t want to either. I've never been in an all-girl band, getting on stage to be treated as a novelty act, because they were consistently treated that way while I was playing in the States. It was an all-pervasive meme that just wouldn’t die, and it lingers today only in a different, post-modern guise. I don’t care how progressive anyone pretends to be, it’s there. I have had the good fortune to work with some completely kick-ass women, Maggie McDermott (in Bubba Zanetti), Donna Damage (in Navigator), and Roni Avenega. I could name others that I wish I had. I simply found that I couldn’t identify with, and felt rather estranged from, other girls. It’s not you, it’s me.

Victim of the patriarchy? Perhaps. I was always hetero but came off quite butch, probably because my influences were mostly male. Let’s blame Bugs Bunny (especially when he got into drag, but that’s another story). I’ve always been a champion of ‘gender-fluidity,’ now that it has a name, whichever way it flowed. Men who were confident in themselves got me and weren't bothered a wit (some boyfriends actually saw me as something of a challenge, which I had no problem with either). My mother, the lesbian feminist, hated that I wouldn’t ‘embrace the sisterhood,’ or cave in to (and be angry about) what I actually saw as just another symptom of systematic oppression. I saw it as an extension of being told to ‘keep to your own’ or something, by joining a girl group. I was beyond all of it.

The late, great Jerry Williams gave me my first guitar pointers, and even drew me a wheel of fifths. Soon I began using RB as my stage name because I wanted to be judged solely on the merit of my playing. And I made sure I could really play by the time I formed Bubba Zanetti; I was woodshedding in Spanish Harlem during `86-`87 to Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, AC/DC, Judas Priest, Voivod, Def Leppard (the Pete Willis stuff)... no one was going to say I was 'pretty good for a girl'. By the time we started playing out around `89 no one ever saw it coming. There was no way to describe the stuff we were doing (Maggie on bass, and Andy Malm from Shaved Pigs, Reverb Motherfuckers on drums), it was so out there and full on.

That may seem a bit of a rant, but I think clarification is important. I've been fairly quiet on the subject and for that reason, have remained largely misunderstood. My friends get me, that's all that matters.

Have you read Tony Rettman’s “NYHC” or Steven Blush’s “American Hardcore”? Are those accurate depictions, to your mind, of what was happening on the New York scene?

I've only read excerpts from both. First we must consider that they are very different types of work; the latter covers many different cities. That said, I feel Tony's book is far superior on several levels based on what I've seen. He let a diaspora of voices be heard, instead of just tossing his opinions around. He seemed to understand he’d have a lot to answer for if he took that route. The research is there, it's solid, it's fresh and evocative of a very special time and place.

Blush's book, by contrast, got a lot of hype as we all know - Geld regiert die Welt - and I see it's been called a 'definitive work' in some circles... perhaps to the outsider looking in, it is. I can't comment beyond saying that what I've read was very poorly written generally, while his NY 'facts' are warped by his subjectivity, and it's terrifically exclusive to boot. I don't remember Steve from any of the NYHC gigs I was at, but I do recall meeting him one night at the Pyramid when he was DJ'ing during the mid-80s between drag shows. Wearing a loud polyester shirt and flares, he told me then he wanted to be a writer. Maybe at that point he was just over it. But I digress.

One thing I've learned from becoming an academic is that there is no definitive history of anything - the field is constantly evolving, open to additional research, new takes and insights, and new interpretations based on the facts. Any good historian will tell you that in order to establish facts, they must be backed by evidence; but at the end of the day they are still open to interpretation because they don’t exist in a vacuum – there’s context. There is never going to be a single account of the NY scene that isn't colored by opinions, even (probably especially) if you were there. There's all this tribal myth-making and in-fighting that goes on about 'what really happened', if you have something to say about your experience don't leave it to opportunistic jokers like Blush to have the last laugh. And be thankful, we lived a life that many only dream of.

How did you get involved with Missing Foundation? What was that experience like?

I knew of Pete from Drunk Driving, which my dear friend Biss played bass in. Donna Damage (No Thanks) introduced us once we became flatmates in 1985 on East 11th street; I think she had been playing percussion in MF's latest incarnation. They did an impromptu gig on the corner of B and 10th across from Life cafe, replete with bullhorn and lit torches. It was angry and anarchic and completely summed up the way I felt at the time. He asked if I wanted to play guitar at their next show and I said yes; it was in a vacant, rubble-strewn lot on avenue C. We played inside a trench filled with petrol set alight. I don't think it lasted more than 10 minutes before emergency services put the kaibosh on the whole shebang. Seeking something resembling legitimacy, I booked us into the Kitchen and CBGB among others. I think Mark Ashwill (drums, RIP) was friends with Rudolf so he got us the Danceteria slot, wherein a porcelain toilet (!) was thrown from the stage at the end of the set, resulting in a thundering explosion which shook the room and filled it with china dust. It was exciting, the gigs were often challenges to see what we could get away with; at the Kitchen we dragged the guts of a piano onstage, stood it upright, and by the end audience members were literally smashing it to bits as I played feedback in a call-and-response sort of thing (while Michael Carter wrapped my legs in duct tape, no less). I still have the recording, it sounded incredible. No one knew what to make of it. We sent people into a frenzy. The fire marshal closed down the first Fort that Latch was running, unfortunately, during one of our gigs. Gizmo from the Rivington School(also RIP x2) dragged a bunch of chicken wire into CBGB once and proceeded to rope off a portion of the audience.

Musically I loved working with MF; we had two rock-solid drummers in Chris Egan and Mark, and Vince played a P-bass through a Big Muff while Pete did his conjuring and incantations over the top. I got to experiment and use every sonic tool in my arsenal. I worked with feedback, jazz riffs, metal hooks, and multiple effects pedals, but still wanted to leave space for the ethereal percussiveness of it all. I got us into the rehearsal room at El Bohio, the old school on East 9th, through my friend Jemeel Mondoc (the same room we used in Pussy Galore) and those 4-track recordings are amazing, I still have a few on cassette. The track ‘Backbreaker’ on that Shimmy-Disc compilation originated from just Mark and I playing alone one day, me using a slide. It sounds totally demonic, and nothing at all like the album version. Pete fired me soon after Carol at CB’s threatened to sue me for damages to the dressing room; nothing to do with me but I felt sorry because Hilly told me he’d book anything I was involved in, and he always did, even years later. I was replaced by a dude named Vern who I threw over a table at the Cat Club. I was being friendly! Anyway, you could never in a million years get away with those kind of shenanigans in NYC today.

According to your Wikipedia page (and were you aware that you had one?), you also served in the ranks of both Pussy Galore and King Missile (among several others). Not only do you boast some fairly notable names on your musical resume, but you’ve crossed party lines, for lack of a better term, more than a few times. I mean, Missing Foundation didn’t seem to have anything to do with the proto-NYHC scene. King Missile were more part of the anti-folk genre, and Pussy Galore seemed to exist apart from all that as well. What do you attribute that to? Were you just restless?

I’ve seen it! It’s pithy. I think I was restless. At the risk of sounding grandiose, perhaps I was the personification of a city in transition. It was partially my age, I was young and still finding myself, but more than anything else I liked meeting musically-minded people, but rubbed just as many of them the wrong way. Seriously, I've always been a polarizing figure and that certainly had something to do with it. I’m an only child and was a total brat. I've been deemed a flight risk and 'difficult to work with'. There's a lot to answer for there. I might not have known what I wanted to do, but more importantly I knew what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to do anything contrived or predictable so I was open to anything that felt free from easy classification. While I started out as a snotty punk, when you stop and think about it, it was only a few years of my life. I'll always have the punk ethic; things suck so let's create something better-kind-of-thing, it’s in my DNA. I still balk at authority. But I guess I'm no good at lingering, tribal devotion to anything but my principles.

The term 'anti-folk', when I first heard it, I was like, yuck, but it wasn't with the same revulsion as when I heard 'scum rock' - they tried to call Bubba Zanetti that! I hate labels, especially tongue-in-cheek stuff that isn't even very clever. I got a couple offers from straight up hair metal bands while living up in El Barrio, but I didn't want to be pigeon-holed and I knew I'd get bored, even more quickly than usual.

On a much more personal note, in 1999 I was officially diagnosed as 'bi-polar' when the medical community found a way to market pharmaceuticals for what was once called ‘an artistic disposition'. I make no excuses but that may explain part of it. ‘Grandpa's crazy gene’ is what I like to call it, but moreover I was perhaps a bit over-enthusiastic about all the opportunities to play and make widely varying kinds of noise. I was fortunate to be able to do that. You could rent a rehearsal room with drums and a full backline for maybe ten bucks an hour.

Of your experiences playing music during those eras, what specific period was your favorite and why?

Despite all my braggadocio, I was always quite insecure and unsure of myself. If you knew me, I think the over-compensation was self-evident. I didn't feel totally in control on stage until I could really sing and play guitar at the same time. So it had to be as late as 1993, with Hellvis, when I felt fully confident and comfortable with everything I had. It all became completely automatic. Although I wrote in Bubba Zanetti I didn't sing; we had a revolving cadre of vocalists including “Jammin’” Jamin Sewell (who is now a NYC council member), Tom Five (Angel Rot, White Zombie) and the infamous Jim Schuermann (Killdozer/Sharky's Machine). It was the first band where I was able to really unleash my insane ideas and thankfully in Maggie and Andy I found two equally over-zealous thrash monkeys and partners-in-musical-crime. Hellvis was a 50-50 operation, writing and singing, between Joe Truck and I. We had the same sense of humor and the same taste in music. It was a seamless collaboration when we weren't at each other's throats. Nearly ten years earlier we played together in the first line-up of Chop Shop and it didn’t go nearly as well. We recorded an LP with Wharton in 1994 that has yet to see the light of day.

So Hellvis was a definite high point for me. Another was the rehearsal weeks leading up to the Even Worse reunion in 2002 when I got to play guitar while singing the songs I used to just stand there and yelp. It felt like redemption for all that earlier awkwardness.

In the Wharton Tiers Ensemble (`96-`97) I was able to return to experimentation and improvisation to an extent, and toured quite a bit. That's actually when I fell in love with traveling; before then I was sort of a village idiot unwilling to leave New York.

All the phases have their own resounding associations for me. But the lawless nature of the Lower East Side in the `80s gave everything a brilliant, hard-edged sheen; it afforded us all the total freedom to be as creative and random as we wanted, we felt vital, even the shittiest gig seemed important somehow. There was a vast number of hole-in-the-wall clubs to play in as well as the established venues. There were bands playing out of artist’s spaces and store front galleries; there was music of every description playing every night of the week, being made by someone that you knew. That will never happen again.

All I ever wanted to do was play. All the rest was just waiting around. Ordinary life was lackluster.

You mentioned recently that you lived pretty far uptown in Manhattan. Did being a regular denizen of myriad downtown locales like Max’s, Tier 3, the Peppermint Lounge, A7 and CBGB make your life difficult? Was your family concerned that you were off at the other end of the island so much of the time?

I'm a native Upper West Sider, but I lived downtown for most of the Wild West days of the punk/noise scene. I lived in a suite in the Hotel Edison on East 32nd street (it was like living in a John Waters film) for a portion of `80-`81, then on Eldridge Street with Jack Rabid, Dave Stein (RIP) and Eric Keil from Even Worse, '81-82. Earl Hudson (Bad Brains) was even living in our kitchen for a while. Everything was pretty much walking distance. Eric and I soon moved to East 11th street where I lived until 1984. In a real pinch I was fortunate enough to be able to go back to mum's at 103rd and Broadway, but it was fraught, and by 1985, I left permanently, back further down East 11th street with Donna… then after the fire, East 5th, East 2nd, Ludlow street... I was pretty much shuttling around with a shopping cart (with my cat and guitar) for about six months.

Eventually Donna took a share on East 117th street where Natz lived (Undead, Cop Shoot Cop) and she inherited his flat AND his rat. Alec Dale from Sharky's Machine lived there for a bit, then I took his room. Soon I had my own flat in the slum next door and was on rent strike for about 2 years. I rode my bike from Spanish Harlem to the Lower East Side a lot. The most difficult part was the hill at 103rd and Madison, or trying to keep knife-wielding crackheads from stealing the bike out from under me no matter what part of town I was in. It wasn't even a nice bike, and I bought it off a crackhead myself! After that I was in Park Slope, then East 5th again, then Williamsburg….I was all over the place until I left for California in early 1998.

My parents were not involved in my life much at all. Concerned? They were clueless. They both basically abandoned me as an infant to be raised by my grandparents, who whisked me off to suburban Detroit from `72 – `80. I was only small. I had never known racism until then, it was horrible and I was bullied for befriending the school's only black family, among other things (like being a total smart arse). My mom was a virtual stranger who impotently tried to impose curfews once I moved back to NYC in 1980. My dad was pretty much out of the picture. He was very enlightened and culturally distinguished; a classical musician, composer and graphic designer in Boston, who would have fainted had he known what I was getting up to.

Meanwhile my mom, also a fantastic artist, was competing with me to prove she was more 'radical’ than I because she had to live as a bisexual when it was still illegal. She offered coke to my friends, which I objected to, not because what she was doing was wholly inappropriate -– we were barely legal, for fuck’s sake -- but because coke was such a bourgeois drug. I did not have any type of 'normal' family environment to speak of. I did have impeccable table manners thanks to my Grandmother, however.

When/why did you eventually leave NYC? Do you come back at all?

I left in February 1998, about seven months after Mark Madden (Hammerbrain) died of cancer. I had a flat on the corner of North 7th and Bedford in Williamsburg, but I gave it up to go to Berkeley. Donna came to my rescue once again and put me and my two cats up. She is the closest thing to a sister I’ll ever have, and probably one of the few people I’d take a bullet for. New York, at that point, was full of ghosts to me. Every street corner felt sad and sinister. I was bereft. Priced out of Manhattan, where I was born, surrounded by bad memories of things I couldn’t change and people who didn’t care -– that’s how it felt at the time . I was spiritually and emotionally vacant. I kept trying to do the same old, familiar things over and over again but they brought me no love. New bands, new people -- none of it worked. It sounds cliché, but part of me died with Mark. Brilliant, amazing and beautiful people were dying all around us, all the time –- remember I was in NYC during the height of the AIDS epidemic -– but it hit me harder than I was willing to admit. He was one of the strongest people I ever knew, was an amazing guitarist and, like me, somewhat misunderstood. But that vacuum made it possible for me to leave. I never would have grown up, had I not.

I visit every now and again. I’ve lived in the UK for over twelve years now. Enough time has passed so that even when I walk through the Lower East Side now it’s not such a smack in the face. The scar has grown over. New York City is about its people. You know when you’re in the presence of a real New Yorker, and I can tell you the bulk of them aren’t farting around in the bars and clubs of the East Village and Brooklyn. That’s kid stuff. When I go back, it still feels like my NYC to me, because I don’t dwell on all the bullshit. There are still so, so many things to appreciate and love about it. Live in London for a while, with all the diesel fumes, where people don’t talk to each other, and pretty much everything is broken, being pulled down or paved over. New York lives.

What are your thoughts about the NYC of today? Would you ever come back? What do you miss the most?

I miss a time, not a place. It’s sad that artists and musicians haven’t got a hope in Hell in making a go of it there now. Real artists; not jumped up NYU mid-westerners or the kids of millionaire foreign nationals. Anyway, all the danger and mystery is gone. If I were a teenager there now, I doubt I’d be feeling much creative inspiration from the opening of a fucking Pinkberry (does it sounds like a euphemism for asshole by accident?) or a new condo going up. At least getting hassled on the subway resulted in a good song or two. I’m considering an eventual return under the right conditions but will say no more than that at present.

What are you doing now? Are you still making music?

I took a complete break from music in 2008, when I embarked upon my academic journey. Since then, I’ve completed a BA (joint honors) in Politics and History at University of Westminster, an MA in Contemporary British History, and am now completing a PhD in Contemporary British (political) History; both of the latter through the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s College London. This time next year I’ll be Doctor RB, with three degrees under my belt. The headline would be ‘Asshole Guitarist Makes Good.’ I guess I had to prove to myself more than anything that I could finish something I started, and that I could actually do something other than music. So it’s been great. Before that I was doing some creative writing, screenplays and that, but empirical research has been much more satisfying to me for some reason. The constraints are challenging. I have a treatment for a musical in mind which I don’t really want to talk about, other than to say it might not be at all what anyone would imagine. Recently I’ve started working on a memoir, mostly so I don’t forget a lot of astonishing people and remarkable experiences I’ve had. The title is "I Never Liked Nirvana (and other things I am not supposed to say)." It’s copyrighted, so no one get any bright ideas. I think the name tells us all we need to know.

Since the research phase for my thesis ended, I began playing guitar again. It’s fantastic, like re-finding the ability to speak. The new material as it stands is kinetic and full of tension, so we’ll see what happens there once the sauce goes on. I’m also looking again at some of the stuff I as working on during those dark times just before I moved to California. I never stopped singing, but I’m not sure how my neighbors might feel about that.

Think about it this way: the first TGI Friday’s was probably identically modeled on a much-beloved institution that had been around for the past hundred years or so before it was razed to make way for a rotary in 1965. There’s not much use in remaining too maudlin or sentimental about change after a point. It is pretty disgusting though. As long as I don’t go there I should be OK. It’s a good reason to avoid Newark airport when crossing over at any rate, like anyone needed another one.

Do you stay in touch with any of your former band mates?

A few. I feel very close to members of Even Worse, and Sloth, and Bubba, and Hellvis… there’s so many people I’ve either pissed off irreparably or that have fallen to the wayside I can’t keep track. That’s what’s making the memoir so difficult to work on. People who haven’t yet died keep me tongue-tied, while people who have died far too soon make me cry, and then I can’t write any more for the day. Thank Jah I still have my guitar and my PhD to keep me focused on the here and now, and even (dare I say) the future. That’s not very punk sounding at all, is it?

Comments

what an f-ing GREAT interview. well done. and thank you for the kind comments about me in it as well. i was lucky to have been r.b.'s bandmate and i never played behind a better frontperson. she was and still is quite electric at all times of the day, no b.s., and was and stil is really smart and funny and quick, the way i like 'em (all of 'ems). and boy do i agree with her summation of new york, currently versus what was on offer 35 years ago if you thought you might have a try/go, what they hey! great work here. and it's always funny to see my freshly minted 19 year old self, standing on my old bed so long ago in that 999 shirt their super nice drummer pablo had given me off his back (soaked, literally, in sweat) after an irving plaza gig that month (i washed it, of course), but what i really like is that like r.b. says, our 2002 reunion WAS SO MUCH fun (and her playing guitar alongside robert made us particularly happy, she really was on it), and that a few of our songs are included here so people can hear them and enjoy them now, so many years later, as they were a gas to do! so many interesting people back then, it's good when any of us are given a chance to speak.

I don't remember wrapping her legs with duct-tape, but not saying it didn't happen...And for the record, I booked the first ever MF gig at Danceteria as part of a pub. party for my mag, redtape on Congo Bill. This shit brings me back. Look for Rivington School book on BlackDog press mid-Oct. Cheers, MC